Tech billionaire Elon Musk's flagship businesses took a severe hit amid his public fight with President Donald Trump, as Tesla's stock slid over 14 points, and SpaceX fell almost 5 points. But it's even worse than that, Bloomberg reported, as all of this had a devastating impact on Musk's personal net worth.
"Minute by minute, post by post, Elon Musk’s very public, extremely online feud with President Donald Trump sliced into his vaunted status as the world’s richest person," reported Dylan Sloan and Tom Maloney. "The final damage at day’s end: $34 billion erased from his personal net worth, the second-largest loss ever in the history of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index of the 500 wealthiest people on the planet. The only bigger one: his own wipeout in November 2021."
Musk remains the wealthiest man on Earth at well over $300 billion. However, the losses today constitute an over 9 percent drop in his net worth, and well below his peak near half a trillion dollars at the start of the year.
The tech mogul for months has been one of Trump's closest allies, having contributed millions of dollars to his election campaign and essentially run large parts of the campaign operation himself, and heading up the administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force to purge the civil service and freeze government grants across the board.
However, as Musk has formally left his White House advisory position in recent weeks, tensions between him and Trump have risen.
Musk was reportedly enraged when Trump abruptly pulled the nomination of one of his close friends to serve as head of NASA, and more recently has railed against Trump's "big beautiful bill" to extend tax cuts and cut Medicaid and food stamps, asserting it makes the government even less fiscally solvent and undercuts what DOGE was trying to do.
As Trump has begun pushing back against Musk's criticism, Musk has thrown the kitchen sink at Trump, calling for his impeachment and implying that he is a child predator.